Grant Wiggins Quotes

“I don’t have all the books I need. In some classes I have two children studying out of one book. And even with that, some of the pages in the book are missing. I need more paper to write on, I need more chalk for the blackboards, I need more pencils, I even need a better heater.”

“Put that chalk down. I can’t afford to break it.”

“tell them im strong tell them im a man good by mr wigin.”

“And that’s all we are, Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood, until we—each one of us, individually—decide to become something else.”

“Cause I’m go’n die soon? That make me a man, Mr. Wiggins?”

“Can’t they work?” he asked me. “Look at all the pecan trees.” [. . .] “Get them off their lazy butts, they can make enough for a dozen toothbrushes in one evening.” “That money usually goes to helping the family, Dr. Joseph.”

“So each time a male child is born, they hope he will be the one to change this vicious circle—which he never does. Because even though he wants to change it, and maybe even tries to change it, it is too heavy a burden because of all the others who have run away and left their burdens behind.”

“I’m supposed to make him a man. Who am I? God?”

“How do people come up with a date and time to take life from another man? Who made them God?”

“Y’all asking a lot, Mr. Wiggins, from a poor old n***** who never had nothing.”

“They sentence you to death because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, with no proof that you had anything at all to do with the crime other than being there when it happened. Yet six months later they come and unlock your cage and tell you, We, us, white folks all, have decided it’s time for you to die, because this is a convenient date and time.”

“I teach because it is the only thing that an educated black man can do in the South today. I don’t like it; I hate it.”

“Me, Mr. Wiggins. Me. Me to take the cross. Your cross, nannan’s cross, my own cross. Me, Mr. Wiggins. This old stumbling n*****. Y’all axe a lot, Mr. Wiggins.”

“Do I know how a man is supposed to die? I’m still trying to find out how a man should live.”

“Exactly what I’m trying to do here with you now: to make you responsible young men and young ladies. But you, you prefer to play with bugs. You refuse to study your arithmetic, and you prefer writing slanted sentences instead of straight ones. Does that make any sense?”